When travelling the M6 north, you may glimpse the kilns of Shap Fell pumping out steam puffs that vapour trail over the hills to the skyline above. I look for it every time I make the journey.

For it is a place of strange enchantment, that spurs the visual imagination. Fantastical, sci-fi, dreamlike, like all the films you grew up with… epic scenes and setting suns that transcended outside to the building sites you tore up on your bike. Taking in the views like vantage points in a high castle. 

Yet flip that against the raw and real workings of industry. Terrain of limestone quarry, the air powdered with chalky dust that catches in the throat and dries your eyes. The mechanical clanks and drops that echo and disperse. 

It had reached 30 degrees celsius heat that day, felt like California not Cumbria. Soon the sun would sink and cast its last spill of light… suspending it all in an atmosphere, beguiling and surreal.

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